New Thoughts (1/18/04-1/20/04)
Many will rejoice at this birth, the angel declares. Again, there is not the slightest bit of uncertainty in his words. They will. They will know that kind of joy that causes the little lambs to skip about in fresh pastures, the sheer, pure, exhilaration of the innocent in a land of plenty. Knowing who this John is to be, it may be a little difficult to think of him as a cause to jump for joy. But there is this in the thought: "joy is a direct result of God's grace." This is part of what Zhodiates has to say regarding this word 'rejoice.'
Indeed, where God's grace is evident (and where isn't it, where men are alive) there is always cause for rejoicing. There is not a man of honest conscience who does not know himself deserving of the wrathful hand of God's justice. Jonathon Edwards, in his famous sermon, pointed this out to those who felt they could deny it. You are suspended on a slender thread over a flaming pit. Only one thing keeps you from falling to certain death amidst those flames - the hand of God. We are, every one of us, sinners in the hands of an angry God, even as Mr. Edwards declared. Yet, we are also, if we have but accepted His gracious offer, also in the hands of a most merciful God. That grace is cause indeed to rejoice!
Grace is that gift given to one without concern for the deservedness of the gift. Every breath we breathe is evidence of God's grace towards us. What one of us can claim our lives are deserving of being allowed to continue? To be guilty of one least part of the Law is to be guilty of the whole, and the penalty due that guilt is death. Yet we live. Grace indeed! Moment by moment, reason to rejoice. The flames haven't become our end yet.
Still, this doesn't seem to do anything towards explaining how it is that John would be cause for many to rejoice. And yet, it does. John would come with the call of repentance. He would, as the angel goes on to say, turn many back to God. The guilty will not willingly seek out the judge unless there is cause to believe that they might be pardoned. This was as much a part of John's message as the repentance. Turn around! There's still time! His grace has not ceased from the earth. See? You still breathe, you still carry on this life! There is yet mercy for His people. Yet the time draws short. The kingdom is at hand, the Lord of the kingdom coming soon along this path, and here is the cause to rejoice: the repentance that John calls us to, the setting aside of our rebellion against the righteous Ruler of all, the return to ways of wisdom, ways of righteousness; that repentance is preparation for what the King brings in His hands. He brings pardon, the pardon which makes it something other than self destruction to turn around. Seek the Judge out! Change your path while there's still time, for He has your pardon in hand. There is forgiveness in the God of all mercy.
We know what we deserve, but He still reaches out with the gift to surpass all gifts. He reaches out with an offer of forgiveness, all undeserved; a gift of grace, His grace. He offers us for free what we could never earn with a lifetime of effort. Is that not cause to rejoice? The call to repentance is indeed a cause to rejoice because of the forgiveness it heralds.
I turn again to the example of the altars before which Zacharias received this message. Two altars: one upon which the sacrifice for sin was burned in hope of receiving forgiveness for our shortcomings, the other for offering up our prayers - the praises, the adoration, the thanks, and the requests - before God. Both involved an offering made, a sacrifice of material goods, a payment if you will. But consider, those offerings will be as nothing if there is no flame to consume them. We can put our sin offering on the altar, the choice bull of our productiveness, but without flames it is just a rotting carcass, a stench. We can mix together special spices and herbs and place them in the golden bowl, but without flames, they will be nothing more than dust. Indeed, though the things may be precious by our standards, they remain no more than a returning to the Lord what was His to begin with. It is He who gives us the power to generate wealth. It is He who causes the grasses to grow, He who fed the bull we have lain out, He who grew the spices and herbs we crushed. No, it requires consuming fire. It requires the coals upon the altar to consume the offering, to transform the mess of death we have given into a sweet smelling aroma.
What shall we use for a coal, then? We no longer put these physical issues on material altars, for we are in a time when types and symbols are fulfilled. The only sacrifice that could truly remove our sins has been given on our behalf, but has He been consumed? Was there fire upon the altar, the true fire which God accepts? There is only one fire He will allow, and that is the fire of a repentant heart. Those are the coals which will consume the offering made on our behalf, and make of it the font of forgiveness we have sought all along. That same coal is the only fire that will change the dusty death of our prayers into a sweet, living sacrifice of praise worthy of our God. This is what John's desert cry was making clear: Repent! Start the coals to burning for the Lamb of God, the acceptable Sacrifice is coming to the altar of your heart.
Why did Israel need this message? They all knew the promises. They all knew Messiah was to come. Surely they were prepared? Ah, but He had been a long time in coming. Centuries had passed since that message come forth, and many if not most of the nation had long since given up on the possibility. No, there was nothing but the life before them, and with the Roman rule over their land, that life was by no means easy. God clearly wasn't listening to the cries of His people any more or surely this situation would not be allowed!
Sound familiar? Even in the years closer to the foundation of our own nation, there were those who were convinced that God was far removed from active involvement in the world He had made. They were not yet willing to go so far as to claim He didn't exist, because to them it was perfectly evident that He did. They simply assumed He'd perhaps moved on to other projects. At any rate, to their thinking, man was on his own, left to do as best he could with the creation God had left him with. Today, that is almost positive thinking compared to what many seem to believe. In its day, that mindset was considered enlightenment. Compared to the darkness of modern atheism, it is bright, but compared to the incomparable truth of God, it is all blackness. He is not silent! He still moves daily on behalf of His own, indeed, even on behalf of those not His own.
We've lost sight of Him, perhaps, yet it is still by His grace that we breathe, still by His Providence that we are sheltered and fed. All our days are truly in His hands. We have waited centuries now for the return of the King. Like the Jews before us, many have given up, decided it was all stories for children. Many have decided that this life, miserable as it is, is all there is. The call still rings out, unchanged from John's day: repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! The God of all creation is coming soon to reclaim His own.
Are your prayers seeming to disappear into nothingness? Do you feel as though God has gone somewhere far? When you seek Him out, do you feel about as successful as the priests of Baal were when Elijah challenged them? Then check the fire on your altar. Are you walking in repentance, or are you convinced you have nothing to repent of? If that's what you feel, then that's the first thing to repent of! There is none good but God. The man who claims he has no sin is a liar, and seeks to make God out to be a liar as well. No, all have sinned and fallen short, even the children of God, even the redeemed.
Martin Luther knew this. His early life in the church was filled with constant crying out for repentance, to the point that his confessors thought perhaps he was just trying to get out of working by taking so much time with them. But, he had a clear view of his righteousness in God's sight. Repentance was there, but the hierarchy of the church in his time were striving to keep the sacrifice of forgiveness from reaching the altar. God was not to be blocked by such things, though, and made His message known by more direct means, and it was this that made all the difference in Luther. Finally repentance and forgiveness met on the altar of his heart, and liberty such as he'd never known was made his. He came to see the grace of God as few men do, to fully grasp the great wonder of God's dealings with himself. The repentance did not disappear from him in that liberty, though. No, the coal was kept bright, that the sweet aroma of his own forgiveness might rise mingled with the heartfelt praises they engendered, making his prayers holy and acceptable in the sight of a holy and very living God.
What are the marks of repentance? This passage gives two rather interesting views of what that repentance will mean. In verse 17, it is said that his labors will turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children. Now, the Living Bible turns that into a softening of adult hearts to become childlike, but this cannot be the intention of the passage. The meaning to Zacharias would have been far more clear. What the angel declared was a direct quotation from Malachi, indeed, some of the last words Israel had had from God. The passage he quotes continues by saying that he will turn the hearts of the children back to their fathers, as well (Mal 4:6). Is this to be taken as meaning children's hearts will become hardened like an adult? No, it seems the TLB must have the wrong idea on this.
There is one very simple explanation for why the angel uses this quotation. In short, it would make very plain to Zacharias what it was the John would be. "It is he who will go." He's, the one, Zach, he's the one that Malachi was talking about when he said this thing. Neither that prophecy, nor the Messiah are directly named, yet the words leave no doubt as to what the angel is announcing.
Given the full quote from Malachi, I think it is plain that we must find a different meaning behind the words, as well. It is not a making the parent's hearts childlike. That is reading other passages into the current message. It's more an issue of restoring things to the way they should be. God established the family, and He did so for a reason. It was designed to be an instrument of nurture for all involved. For the children, there was to be the guarantee of parents who would be devoted to the task of looking out for their best welfare, who would train them up in the ways of God, preparing them for a future and a hope. For the parents, there was the assurance that in their old age there would be children now grown who would be equally devoted to the task of looking out for their best welfare, seeing that the days of their agedness would be well provisioned. Indeed, the blessings of family extended beyond this parent/child relationship. Families were designed to remain far more tightly coupled than we see them now. Grandparents would also be around to offer their wisdom to both parent and child, aiding in the challenges of rearing godly children, and at the same time softening the trial of discipline for the child.
In the present, this has been largely distorted, and in many ways lost completely. We live in a time when children are more nuisance than blessing to the parents. All sorts of arrangements are made to keep the children out from under foot so that parents can pursue their own lives. Thus the day cares, thus public schools, thus the electronic baby sitter of television and video. Children, likewise, are no longer really expected to care much for their parents, except perhaps to see to it that they get to a rest home somewhere. Grandparents are largely out of the scene completely, too active in pursuing the pleasures of being freed from responsibilities of work and rearing to be available to pass their wisdom on. Sad, really. The old song from the sixties says you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. In this case, it's been gone a long time, and we still don't seem to recognize what's missing. Apparently, this problem is nothing new to mankind. It would seem that wherever wealth and ease take hold, it is fallen nature to become caught up in the pursuit of those things to the exclusion of all else.
It would seem that Israel in Malachi's time was in much the same position as western civilization is today. The final clause of his prophecy - the reason that a turning back of the hearts was needed - is cause for concern. "Lest I come and smite the land with a curse." Indeed, as so often seems to be the case, the very condition which God is declaring wrong bears the curse within itself. We see it unfolding before us today. Children have by and large lost all respect for parents. They are no more than an annoyance which must be put up with until the legal age of majority is reached. They have no say, no authority, in the eyes of their children.
No, nor is there any great interest in the children on the part of the parents. We get what we give. We have trained them to recognize that they are an annoying nuisance to us and nothing more, an unwanted responsibility. We have trained them well. They will not long remain where they are not wanted. We have trained them to look elsewhere for knowledge, for meaning, for affection. We have trained them well. We have trained them so well that they now know us to be superfluous. We are an anachronistic vestige of the dark ages, to be got rid of at the earliest possible moment.
God calls His people to repent. Turn back from your disinterest, restore the bonds of family to what they ought to be. This is exactly the same message that is contained in the following clause of Luke 1:17. Turn back the disobedient to the wisdom of righteousness! There is wisdom in pursuing the course of life in the manner God has intended. Indeed, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Ps 111:10, Pr 9:10). The NASB speaks of the attitude of righteousness in this passage, but wisdom really seems to me to fit better. Be disposed towards God's intent in your creation, or, if we were to combine a few phrases from Thayer's Lexicon, turn them to a "knowledge and holy love of the will of God," shown in living as "one who is such as he ought to be." We have been stubborn, refusing to believe what all creation tells us is true. Humanity is almost desperate to find some other explanation for life, any other explanation than "I AM the Life."
God calls us to turn away from our habitual disobedience, our willful refusing to understand, our stiff-necked insistence on going the wrong way. He calls us to become as we ought to be, with thoughts, feelings, actions, every fiber of our being wholly conformed to the will of our Creator. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fullness of wisdom is found in righteousness, in allowing holy fear to shape our character according to the pattern of His will.
We were each one of us designed with a purpose. Contrary to popular thought that would reduce us to mere accident, our lives hung upon the whim of a mother's choice, God declares otherwise. It is not a mother's choice that gave us life, it is God. It is not heredity and upbringing that are to shape our character, it is God. He has purposefully created us, and He has created us for a purpose. Oh, how that verse keeps returning to my thoughts! He has prepared good works for us in advance, in order that we may do them! What an awesome God! He knows how greatly we desire to please this One who has created us, who has saved us, who has called us His own, and He knows how challenged we are in that area. So, what does He do? He puts things in our path for us to do, things pleasing in His sight, things we cannot miss, and He prepares us by His Providential care to be thoroughly prepared and primed to do those things He puts before us.
Another word for the disobedience we are called to turn from is unbelief, and the opposite of unbelief is, of course, belief - faith. Faith is a matter of the mind, to be sure. Without the involvement of the mind, how can we claim belief in anything? To suggest blind faith is to suggest the untenable. Blind faith is not faith at all, it is simply emotion. Blind faith is like the seed scattered on rocky soil. It will stand only so long as nothing disturbs it, but will shrivel up and die at the first challenge. No, faith requires the mind, requires the settled decision of thought. But faith requires something more, as well. It requires the spirit.
We are quite familiar with that phrase 'in the spirit of.' We may speak of an act done out of a spirit of generosity, and here in America, we have all heard about the spirit of '76, that common motivation which fueled the Revolution. Here, it is said that John will have the spirit of Elijah. This is to say that the same things that made Elijah tick, the same concerns that fueled him, these will also be evident in John. There will be a thirst in John to see all idolatry, everything but the true worship of the true God removed from the midst of God's people. But, like Elijah, he will not come crying destruction upon the rebellious nation. He will come with a call of hope. He will come to remove the blinders from the eyes of the nation, to point out what it is they have been doing, and to show them the better Way.
Martin Luther declared that the spirit was "the house where faith and God's word are at home." This is exactly what makes the spirit essential to faith. Faith and belief require the mind to think, but they also require a heart that is hungry for the word of God, a heart that welcomes the word of God. The spirit, writes Zhodiates, is "man's vertical window." It is the spirit that introduces the mind to wisdom, true wisdom. Truly, the love of God is an all-consuming thing. It is a matter for heart, mind and spirit, a matter for body and soul. There is the great commandment: to love Him with every aspect of our being, and it will take every aspect of our being to do so. It is impossible, I should think, to love him with only a part. How could we love Him with our mind, if our heart were not also in it? How can we claim to love Him in our hearts, if our minds don't dwell upon Him? How would heart or mind even begin to comprehend this One we say we love, if the spirit were not renewed within us, empowered to introduce us to Him who is far and away above our thoughts and beyond our comprehending? If, then, the internal life, which all of these combined define, loves this awesome God, how can it be that the acts of the body which contains that life should not also be acts of love for Him?
Lord, You have called me with an everlasting love. You have called me, and I am Yours. Indeed, you have attracted me to Yourself with Your lovingkindness towards me (Jer 31:3). You were determined that I should know You, should turn from my disobedience to the wisdom of conformity to Your design. What can I say? You're irresistible. Indeed, You wooed me, didn't You? And now the inward man is so delighted to respond to Your great love with love of its own. How I wish I could say 'wholly in love,' yet I know there are times, Lord. There are times when it all seems too much. There are times when I can understand those who were ready to go back to Egypt. Thank You, that You don't allow me to take action on those thoughts, but they're there nonetheless, and I would be a liar were I to deny them.
Then there's this flesh, Lord. How can it be? How can I love You so much and yet betray that love so regularly? How is it that I can walk away from being with You in these times and so quickly find myself doing and saying things that are so wholly devoid of Your spirit? God! It's just not acceptable to me! There is such agony in this constant need to repent. Is this really an inescapable part of being left in the world while separated from it? Is this really a condition that must persist so long as flesh remains? Oh! That it were not so! Yet, Lord, You are wise beyond my knowing. Can it be that You allow this to keep our hunger for home strong? I know there is a great longing in me for the time when failures are no more, when sins no longer tempt and torment.
When, Lord? How long? Will it ever get any easier to follow Your ways? Oh, I know You have called me. You left me no room for doubt on that account, did You! Yet it bothers me, my King. Have I made Your paths straight in the desert of this flesh? Have I allowed Your workings to prepare me for Your work? I pray You find it to be so. I am so thankful to recall that You see the end from the beginning. You already look upon the finished product of this imperfect work, see the perfection You Yourself will make of it. Yes, You will see this creation of Yours reach its intent. Teach me, Lord, how to accept the touch of those tools by which You are shaping me without complaint, that Your work may be done more easily and more swiftly in me.
Elijah learned a lesson which we would do well to remember. We read of God's miraculous works among men, and we ooh and ah. We hear tales of powerful displays in our day, and again there is an excitement that gets hold of us. We are not, really, all that far removed from those who gathered around Jesus saying, "show us a sign." Perhaps this is a disease peculiar to the Pentecostal and Charismatic end of the Christian spectrum. Perhaps. If so, it is a disease we ought to seek a cure for. In our need for this cure we would not be alone.
Elijah found himself in need of the same thing at one point. He had been used of God most powerfully to refute the idolatries of Baal, and point the people of God back towards true worship. He had called down fire from heaven. He had restored life to a dead child. Truly amazing things he had done by the power of God. It seems that perhaps he had become distracted by that power, and when the power left, and it seemed that perhaps Jezebel was back on the ascendant, he despaired, and hid away. It was at this point that God came to him with a most peculiar display, a most provocative message. The most powerful forces of nature came passing before Elijah's hideaway, things to strike awe into the heart of a man. Here was power displayed! And yet, in each case, the message comes: God was not in that powerful display. Finally, there came the gentlest breeze, then and only then was God's voice to be heard (1Ki 19:9-13).
What was the point of all this? Elijah, I think, had become distracted by power, and could no longer see God except in displays of power. God had to remind him that power alone was not evidence of His blessing. Certainly every force of nature is His to command, but so is every gentleness of nature. He does not always work through grand display, but often through quiet background operations. Gilead had to turn away many who came to help him because God would not use such a large army to turn back the enemy, lest the army think it was their power that had done the trick.
Furthermore, and of critical import for our day, acts of power can and will be counterfeited. Beware of chasing after signs and wonders, beware of those who would claim this as their holy seal of approval! The problem is, we fail to comprehend the signs and wonders of God. That gentle breeze was perhaps the greatest wonder of all! By all rights, nobody should have survived the flood, yet one family did. The flood was not the wonder, the family emerging at the end was the wonder! The powers of nature passing by Elijah's cave were not the wonder, the wonder was that God didn't simply destroy the rebellious nation by the powers at His command, but sent instead a gentle breeze. The wonder was that life went on.
If one would see a sign and a wonder, he need look no further than Jonathon Edwards. Here was a preacher who, by such accounts as I have come across, lacked a great deal in the way of charisma. I am told that when he preached, he read from his text in almost perfect monotone. He did not extemporize, he did not adlib. He carefully prepared his messages, and he delivered them word for word as though reciting from a book. Nor were his messages of the seeker-friendly variety. No, he delivered hard words to the congregation. Those words were not watered down, either. He was an intelligent man, and he wrote to the level of his intelligence. By modern standards of church practice, he was doing pretty much everything wrong. Yet it was this man who, perhaps more than any other, was responsible for one of the greatest revivals in American history, perhaps in western history. That is a sign and a wonder! Miraculous healings and the like are fine things, but the true miracle is a life in rebellion restored to the wisdom of righteousness. Where this is happening, there let us know we have found a man of God at work.
